


Long Live the Long Lost King

by Kryptaria



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Don't copy to another site, Fluff, M/M, Not Beta Read, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 21:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17108285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: Bucky had no idea he was royalty.To be fair, it’s not like they had DNA tests and ancestry databases when he was a kid. But now? Turns out his sisters had kids, and their kids had kids, and someone got a multi-pack discount on DNA test kits.





	Long Live the Long Lost King

Bucky had no idea he was royalty.

To be fair, it’s not like they had DNA tests and ancestry databases when he was a kid. But now? Turns out his sisters had kids, and their kids had kids, and someone got a multi-pack discount on DNA test kits.

No one’s surprised S.H.I.E.L.D.-slash-HYDRA has its fingers in every DNA database on the planet. The surprise is that Wakanda  _also_  tracks DNA, though it’s a surprise only to the people who still think Wakanda is a tech-poor nation of farmers and herders on the brink of starvation.

“So wait,” Bucky tells (Princess) Shuri as she’s running another battery of tests on his latest arm. “My mom’s grandfather was a King, her mother was a Queen,  _she_  was a Queen, and --”

“And you,” Shuri interrupts without looking away from her holodisplay, “are your mother’s eldest child. Therefore, you’re their King. They thought the line was lost. Now they know better.”

“Okay first, my grandma was an immigrant with no money to her name. About as far from royalty as you can get.”

“Fleeing a revolution.” Shuri gives him a wry shrug. “Her father was a very bad King.”

“And second, wouldn’t it have just gone to Rebecca? I mean, I...” He doesn’t articulate it, even though Wakanda’s neuro-regeneration therapy means he remembers everything in blood-soaked detail. The fall from the train. Zola’s experiments. The Red Room’s conditioning.

“You were actually never declared dead. Missing-in-action. Same as your Steve,” she teases.

“He’s not  _my_  Steve,” Bucky retorts, glad to fall back into a familiar argument. Anything’s better than his memories -- and this new surreal twist.

Royalty?  _Him?_

Can’t be.

 

~~~

 

But it is.

It takes three months only because the Winter Soldier’s reputation is a public relations disaster and because Wakanda’s scientists can go into much finer detail when it comes to DNA testing than any outside lab.  After the scientists confirm Bucky’s lineage, the PR machine kicks into gear.

Suddenly he’s got a personal assistant, a private photographer, and a full social media team. They coach him on everything from proper selfie techniques to “please stop scaring the talk show hosts” until he builds an modest international fanbase.

Next time Steve comes to Wakanda, the photographer (who retired from the Dora Milaje without losing her ability to sneak around undetected by two super-soldiers) captures some candid shots that add two zeroes to Bucky’s follower numbers and spawn a whole new PR nightmare.

 

~~~

 

“Will you two walk in together?” Shuri asks on the flight to Bucky’s new realm. She’s the only one who’s not twitchy and nervous, probably because she’s been a Princess her whole life, so none of this is new. Plus she beat Bucky and Steve both at rock-paper-scissors, so she’s the one piloting.

“What?” Steve asks, because Bucky’s too distracted, still coming to grips with his new reality.

“Are you walking in together?” There’s a dangerous lilt to Shuri’s voice, one that makes Bucky wish T’Challa had come instead, but apparently reigning monarchs never attend other coronations. Something about too many Sovereigns in one room. “You know, as King and Consort?”

This time, the  _“What?”_  comes from Bucky.

Smugly, Shuri takes one hand off the controls and tosses him her phone. It’s open to one of his social media accounts.

At a touch, the screen lights up, filling the air with a full-color hologram. It’s a gorgeous sunset seen from the top of the waterfall. He and Steve are visible only in silhouette, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, facing away from the camera.

Steve leans in, then makes a strangled sound as he starts scrolling through the comments. They’re equally split between incoherent variants of “!!!”, emoji strings, and “keysmashing,” which is apparently a good thing, and ---

\--- and ---

“O. M. G. kiss already,” Bucky reads, because it’s repeated about a hundred times. “They’re so married, I can’t even?”

“Uh,” Steve says helpfully.

Bucky says nothing. He’s almost certain that if he got married, he’d remember it. Wakanda’s neuroscientists are the best, after all.

 

~~~

 

“Calm down, Buck,” Steve says calmly for about the thousandth time. Thanks to Zola’s serum, Bucky can hear him all the way across their suite, from one bathroom to the other. “It’s ceremonial. You open Parliament, accept a few oaths on behalf of the people, and do a couple of tourism commercials. They’ve had a hundred years to legislate any real power away from their missing royalty.”

“But...” Bucky shakes his head, trying not to think of any of it: the fact that he’s King of a country he’s never even heard of, his upcoming coronation, and... well,  _Steve._

Mostly because he  _has_  thought about it, back in the past and as recently as about five minutes ago.  _OMG kiss already_.

He stares at himself in the mirror, struggling to knot his tie. With his hair tied back and a gorgeous new suit, he can almost pretend this was last century. Borrow Dad’s car, pick up Steve, meet the girls he’d set up as their dates...

Only this time, instead of Dad’s car, he has a horse-drawn carriage. And instead of a couple of girls to date, he has...

Steve walks in, and Bucky realizes he’s been staring silently at his own reflection for way too long. “Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, or tries to. It comes out like the breath’s been punched out of his lungs, because  _he sees Steve_.

This Steve doesn’t match Bucky’s memory. The suit doesn’t hang on his skinny frame. His tie isn’t hanging below his belt. His complexion isn’t pasty white, with dark circles under his reddened, irritated eyes.

No, he’s tall and gorgeous and fills out his suit like a dream. He’s not just the picture of health. He radiates a power that he’d never had as a kid and the tenacity he’s always had in abundance.

But this Steve is the same he’s always been, because he’s looking at Bucky in that same way he always has: a little bit of worry, a little bit of exasperation, and a whole lot of what Bucky thinks maybe might be something more than just fondness.

When Bucky can’t say anything else, Steve gets right up in his personal space --  _their_  personal space -- and starts doing up Bucky’s tie for him. He’s looking down, maybe avoiding Bucky’s eyes, maybe knowing damn well that he’s showing off his long, dark eyelashes.

“You forget how to dress yourself?” Steve asks. It’s probably meant to be teasing, but it comes out husky.

 _OMG kiss him,_  the internet said.

“Fuck,” Bucky whispers, because  _yes_. Fuck the coronation, fuck politics, fuck PR.

The internet, in its collective wisdom, has taught him about “bucket lists,” and kissing Steve has just shot up to number one on that list, followed by a whole lot of other Steve-related things that have nothing to do with the coronation and everything to do with getting rid of these very nice suits they’re both wearing.

And Bucky  _still_  can’t say anything, because he’s staring at Steve through newly-opened eyes.

Steve finishes with the tie and snugs it up against Bucky’s throat. There’s all of two inches of space between them, and their eyes meet, and Bucky remembers that Steve’s always been the first one to jump into a fight.

Super-soldier reflexes mean Bucky’s got a whole quarter-second to pull away, to stop Steve, to say no.

He doesn’t.

He lets the kiss happen. Welcomes it, though it’s little more than a close-mouthed press of lips, clumsy and unpracticed and full of desperation.

This  _isn’t_  what the internet meant by “kiss already.”

Bucky grabs hold of Steve’s lapels and pins him in place, because Steve’s not one to surrender gracefully. When Steve gasps, Bucky tips his head so their noses aren’t mashed together, then flicks his tongue at Steve’s lips.

Steve stops fighting and gives in to Bucky’s lead, lips parting softly, sweetly, and his wordless sigh screams  _finally_  into every cell of Bucky’s body. He lets Bucky crowd him back against the bathroom counter, bodies pressed close from knees to chests, until even their metabolism has to surrender to the biological need for breath, for oxygen, for a moment to let their brains recover with the massive continental shift that’s just happened.

Bucky backs off just enough to meet Steve’s eyes. The sky blue is almost gone, lost under the haze of desire shining through his huge, dark pupils.

Bucky wants nothing more than to drown in that desire, to dive deep and pull Steve right in with him. Judging by what he’s feeling down below, not just in his own pants, he’s not the only one.

Conveniently, there’s a nice, big royal bed in the next room. “Should --”

“Do you --” Steve asks at the same time.

“Your Majesty!” someone calls, knocking urgently on the outer door to the suite, shouting in a language Bucky barely remembered his grandmother speaking when she got upset.

Steve’s cheeks flush, and he snarls out an oath in French that would make Denier proud and half of America collapse in a pearl-clutching faint. (Any other time, Bucky would’ve cracked a rib from laughing. At heart, Steve’s still the kid from Brooklyn who enlisted to fight a war. Swearing is the least of his vices.)

“You want me to tell them to fuck off?” Bucky offers, hoping like hell Steve will say yes, even though he knows that’d never happen. This coronation falls under “civic duty” and “community responsibility,” and America’s red voters did get that part right, at least when it comes to Steve.

Sure enough, Steve shakes his head, squaring his shoulders and smoothing his rumpled jacket. His hands linger down there a little too long, and Bucky has to do some adjusting of his own.

But Bucky can’t resist a little push. He leans in for a soft kiss along Steve’s jaw, a brush of lips-on-skin that ends right under Steve’s ear. Steve’s whole-body shudder tells Bucky his memories are working just fine, and that at least some of what did it for girls way back when has the right effect on Steve, too.

“C’mon, Steve. I’m their King. Don’t they have to listen to me?”

Steve’s groan sends more of Bucky’s blood rushing south -- at least until Steve says, “Yeah, but do you really want to give  _Shuri_  this kind of ammo to use against you?”

 _“Shit.”_  That gets Bucky to back off a good two steps. Bad enough Shuri’s going to have a field day on social media, once she catches wind of this.

“Your Majesty!” the flunky repeats, more urgently, now pounding on the door.

Bucky sucks in his gut, shoves his cold metal hand down his pants, and calls on all his training to get his body back under control. He can keep fighting with wounds that would drop anyone else (except Steve, of course) which means he’s not going to let an inconvenience like this get in the way.

More to the point, he’s not going to leave it visible for Shuri to photograph and plaster all over the internet.

After another personal adjustment of his own, Steve gives Bucky a wry smile. “Sorry. I mean, I didn’t...”

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for later,” Bucky retorts without heat, at least for now. Plenty of time for that after the coronation.

Never lacking in courage, Steve doesn’t hesitate to press a quick, clumsy kiss to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “Don’t be nervous. I’ll be right there, as soon as it’s done.”

Bucky starts to nod, then stops.

He looks into Steve’s eyes. They’re a little more blue and a little less lusty, but that just means Bucky can see the love that’s always been there, hidden away in both their hearts.

Smiling, Bucky holds out his hand, warm flesh and blood, and asks, “What do you say we walk in together?”


End file.
